Scientists call for independent review into Tassie hunt for fox

SCIENTISTS who earlier this year labelled the state’s expensive fox eradication effort a farce has asked the University of Canberra to conduct an independent review into the work they did at the bequest of Tasmania’s fox hunters.

The presence of foxes in Tasmania is under dispute.Source: News Limited

Clive Marks, speaking on behalf of the Review Panel for an Independent Review of the Tasmanian Fox Eradication Program, also asked the university to provide him access to publicly funded data from its Institute of Applied Ecology.

Dr Marks said the review should be done by a panel of independent academics from other universities, headed by an impartial chair.

Canberra University has responded, saying it will commission a former Deputy Vice-Chancellor of Research in a Group of Eight university to advise it on the basis of the documentary evidence.

Dr Marks said a molecular assay and ecological model from the IAE was used to conclude that foxes were/are widespread in Tasmania.

“This appeared to be the best empirical justification for a large and controversial fox eradication program that has been estimated to involve public funds in the vicinity of $50 million,” Dr Marks says in his letter.

“However we could find no review of the precision and quality of these molecular data, especially by suitably qualified and independent molecular biologists.”

He said it was a sensible time to seek a re-evaluation of the past conclusions through independent review.

On June 24, Tasmanian Upper House member Ivan Dean will table a motion asking the State Government to conduct an inquiry into the state’s 13-year fox eradication effort.

Mr Dean, a former police officer and a long-time fox sceptic, said evidence continued to mount that many of the activities undertaken by those in control of the fox eradication taskforce were ‘unreasonable” .

‘Someone has to be responsible for that activity and there needs to be close scrutiny of what exactly has been going on,” Mr Dean said.

Comments on this story

David Obendorf of West Hobart Posted at 11:36 PM June 09, 2014

Peter Turner, your view has been expressed by others on many occasions; including by politicians. In the near future you and all other interested Tasmanians will have the opportunity to read our publication that discusses the quality of the evidence that DPIPWE relied on to continue its decade-long war on foxes using 1080 baiting. The onus of proof was always with this taxpayer-funded government department to demonstrate that they were relying on more than unsubstantiated hearsay of fox introductions, potentially transportable dead-fox exhibits from the mainland, a DNA test prone to false-positive results, and thousands of anecdotal public sighting reports that were strongly correlated with newspaper fox stories and the taskforce's own propaganda efforts. The official reporting of a single Bruny Island DNA fox-positive scat in 2009 should have been a reality check for this program ... but it didn't! Tasmanians have good reason to ask why someone decided in late 2012 to declare that foxes are now widespread in Tasmania, based on poor quality data and no corroboration from any public sighting report.
The website at www.tasmanianfox.com is worth a read.

Peter Turner of Lower Invermay Posted at 1:56 PM June 09, 2014

David Obendorf of West Hobart. Sorry to put a different spin on your fox carcase and scat theory but here goes. On the occasions whenever it looked like the government might weaken and shut down the fox task force some with vested interests in having it continued may well have gathered some fox roadkill and scat in the Port Melbourne area and had it transported to Tasmania and distributed in areas where the task force could "accidentally" find it. Thus the search activity is rejuvenated and more funding flows and life goes on for those out in the field laying 1080 baits and those in universities who rely on that funding for their financial support. The Fox Task Force which has never found a fox is an industry within itself.

David Obendorf of West Hobart Posted at 11:06 PM June 07, 2014

The Review referred in this article is one that the University of Canberra has agreed to undertake after a panel of independent scientists requested it. It is not a government review but a review on the data produced by the Institute of Applied Ecology within the University of Canberra. IAE carried out the DNA testing on carnivore scats recovered in Tasmania and DPIPWE accepted these results as the best empirical data that there were a number of foxes living in Tasmania over their test years: 2005 to 2011. In late 2012 the Canberra lab and DPIPWE jointly published a paper that claimed that foxes were widespread in Tasmania based on the 56 scats out of nearly 10,000 scats testing positive at this University of Canberra DNA lab.
Those interested in the findings of the independent scientists review panel's 2 years of research can go to the website: www.tasmanianfox.com Also go to the ABC radio national website and listen to the Background Briefing program on the Tasmanian fox program broadcast on Sunday 4 May. Thank you.